New Ghostcrawler Blog: Cataclysm Talent Tree Post-Mortem

Ghostcrawler's back after a hiatus from posting his developer blogs and this time he wants to talk talent trees. A lot of us aren't a big fan of the new trees, especially because it feels foreign to take an entire tree without looking up; frequently a good spec boils down to a cookie cutter spec with 1-2 points in a different ability or two.

Then again, cookie cutters were always popular--even in vanilla. Cataclysm just streamlined them. All in all, this is an excellent post-mortem into why Blizzard changed talents and how they feel about it currently, even if the system has its detractors. It's also a good examination into mastery and early leveling as well as endgame goals.

You may have noticed we changed class talent trees for Cataclysm. We changed not just the trees themselves, as you might expect for an expansion, but the entire structure of the trees and the way you choose talents. Now that the Cataclysm model has been in play for several months, the team has been discussing what we like and don’t like about it, and I thought that might be of interest to some of you. As always with this series, this is design rumination, not a list of upcoming changes.

What Worked Well

The talent trees are simpler now, but without losing a lot of depth. Most of what we cut were passive talents that everyone took anyway, or really lame talents that did nothing.

Choosing your specialization at level 10 and not having to delay playing your character the way you want feels great. You can play your shaman as Elemental or Enhancement with the tools and bonuses to make either work.

Specs within a class feel different. This was a big challenge for the DPS warriors, warlocks, hunters, and rogues in particular. Nowadays those specs have different rotations, different strengths and utility, and a different flavor overall.

Mastery integrates into the trees well. We can delay the complexity until higher level, and we’re at the point now where it’s a competitive stat for many specs (though to be fair, not all yet).

There are some legitimate hard choices for many of the specs. Usually these come in two varieties: which talent you want before you can advance to the next tier of the tree, or where you want to spend those remaining talents after you’ve hit the bottom of the tree.

At the risk of catching flak for this statement, I feel that the game is as balanced as it’s ever been. When you look back at the vanilla or Burning Crusade days there were many specs that were just jokes and the difference between the highest performing and worst performing specs was on the order of 30-50% or more. Nowadays, players worry about 5-10% differences. Those are differences we still want to fix, absolutely, but we’ve come a long way. The talent trees have helped us do that.

What Didn’t Work

I’ll admit there are still a few clunker talents -- those that are undertuned or just not interesting enough. There aren’t many though, and they’re relatively easy to replace.

On the other hand, the talent trees still have traps for the unwary. For example, a Fury build that skips over Raging Blow is making a serious mistake. That may seem obvious to current players but it’s the kind of thing someone returning to the game after a hiatus might not understand immediately. (After all, you didn’t robotically take Ghostly Strike just because it was a gold medal ability.) While there is something to be said for safe choices, it would also be nice if the talents we expected players to have were talents they always had.

Some players miss true hybrid builds. (Hybrid in this context means spending near evenly in two trees -- I’m not talking about the more common use of “hybrid” as a tank or healing class.) To be fair, these builds were either not very competitive or were just cherry picking a few powerful talents in order to create something that was likely overpowered, especially in PvP. In other words, the reality of the hybrid build never lived up to the myth. But it’s fair to say that it’s impossible now to have a hybrid build, and we understand some players want them back.

I said above that there are tough choices within the trees of many specs, but there aren’t very many of them within each spec. Often it can come down to where to spend those last 1-3 talent points. While that was our goal, it would be even more exciting if there were more of those hard decisions. Hard decisions can be painful when you’re faced with excluding an ability or mechanic that’s fun to have. But overall we think hard, exclusive decisions are a good thing. They encourage experimentation and discussion and give players a chance to try out different things, all of which can help keep them engaged.

Even worse, one potential place to spend those points is in the first two tiers of the other trees of your class, yet those talents are extremely design-constrained. First, they have to be attractive to the main spec using that tree, so chances are you’re not going to find much interest in the healing tree if you’re a damage dealer (unless you want to improve your limited healing). Second, those top-tier talents can’t affect higher level abilities since the talents are available at level 10. Finally, because those talents are available early, they should really be relatively simple to understand for new or returning players. You don’t want to put complex procs with lots of exceptions and internal cooldowns that high in the tree. All of those reasons mean that it’s rare that there’s a true game-changing talent available in those first two tiers. This would be totally broken, but imagine you could spend those last 10 points anywhere in another tree. Much more exciting, huh?

This is a personal pet peeve, but I don’t like the talents that have a 33/66/100% chance to do what you want them to do. That’s just an awkward way of making a valuable talent cost more than one point. The new Cataclysm talent tree design didn’t cause this problem, but it didn’t fix it either.

The Future

This is the part where I’d really love to share our ideas for how we could address these problems, but some discussions are still a little too rough even for the dev watercooler. When we’re a little farther along, we’ll be able to share more. In the meantime, this is a great topic for further discussion. Players like to evaluate the talents in their particular class, but it’s also useful to evaluate the talent tree system as a whole. It’s an iconic design for World of Warcraft for sure, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft. He once spent a summer capturing live radioactive alligators. True story.

Comments

Comment by ExDementia

I like Ghostcrawler. It's too bad people don't really understand what is so hard about balancing this game.

Interesting read.

Comment by Lieandra

on 2011-06-01T12:58:16-05:00

In:

The Future

He should put a lot more of:

What Didn’t Work

in the didn't work section,

Instead of putting excuses as to why:

What Worked Well

worked well.

I think that is one of the reasons people don't understand... They don't understand HIM, and not what it is that makes balancing a game difficult. Not everyone is a game developer, but everyone that is a player of the game developed, is a player of the game. (No rap puns intended.)

For instance:

To be fair, these builds were either not very competitiveor were just cherry picking a few powerful talents in order to create something that was likely overpowered, especially in PvP.

Contradiction within the same sentence. A non-competitive yet overpowered hybrid build being a possibility.

Or:

In other words, the reality of the hybrid build never lived up to the myth.

Yet the hybrid could be overpowered? That would be living up to the "myth".

I am one of those that doesn't like him, or rather: his reasoning as I've never met him. But it's because he typically does what he did in his post above: Tell you something with a shiny sparkly thing in his hand at the same time. Meaning: distract-fully. He is very good at doing so, and I can't knock him for that. But I rather read the advertisement without all the fluff words in it.

Comment by xaratherus

on 2011-06-01T12:59:22-05:00

I read a number of the comments over on MMO Champion, as well as the article itself.

For the most part, the only 'anti-GC' comment I really agree with is this: The "What we did wrong" section is really more of a "We're sorry for this, but we did nothing wrong - or these things were already broken before" section.

But overall I think the new talent trees are good, if still a bit bloated in some classes/specs.

While it's only indirectly related to the talent trees, and more to choosing a particular tree, I think that some Masteries could still use a more 'active' approach to their effects - even if it's just an easily-recognized graphic effect that comes up when the mastery procs.

To be fair, these builds were either not very competitive or were just cherry picking a few powerful talents in order to create something that was likely overpowered, especially in PvP.

Contradiction within the same sentence. A non-competitive yet overpowered hybrid build being a possibility.

Not at all. He used an or, not an and; that means that some hybrid builds were woefully underpowered, while other hybrid builds (separate builds - not the ones referred to in the first sentence) as incredibly overpowered. For instance (and only examples - not real ones), a hybrid build of Prot/Holy for Paladins might have been incredibly overpowered, while a hybrid Shadow/Disc Priest build was gimped to the point of not working at all.

Comment by Xykar

on 2011-06-01T13:04:18-05:00

There are two ways to think about Talent Trees, I feel:1) A way to slowly give the player access to more skills, spells and abilities as they level up. This prevents them from being overwhelmed early on in their playing careers.2) A way to customize your character to your play style and enjoyment.

The way Ghostcrawler describes the developer's point of view seems to be heavily in the first category. By design (paraphrasing) there should only be a couple hard decisions in your talent tree, while the majority of points are practically predetermined through "what is best" perceptions or numbers from other players. This is disappointing in a sense that you're getting a lot of very similar characters.

I don't have a solution to fix it, and I trust Blizzard, but I'd love to see more ways to individualize the character abilities rather than be ridiculed and shunned for not having certain things or putting points in 'worthless' things, as perceived by others.

Comment by kanivara

on 2011-06-01T13:06:22-05:00

To be fair, these builds were either not very competitiveor were just cherry picking a few powerful talents in order to create something that was likely overpowered, especially in PvP.

Contradiction within the same sentence. A non-competitive yet overpowered hybrid build being a possibility.

You completely missed the OR there, didn't you. Some hybrid specs sucked balls. Some hybrid specs were insanely OP. My druid's PvP resto spec in Wrath had a bunch of balance talents so that I could do decent damage in arena as well as heal really well. GC didn't say that a "non-competitive yet overpowered build" was a possibility. He said you had one OR the other. Crappy OR overpowered. A lot of PvP retadins I know picked talents from both Ret and Prot in order to survive back in Wrath. They were INSANE. If you tried that with a rogue, you were dumb and it sucked.

Comment by MrSCH

on 2011-06-01T13:12:05-05:00

An interesting read. I agree with Dementia.

Comment by Lieandra

on 2011-06-01T13:23:28-05:00

Not at all. He used an or, not an and; that means that some hybrid builds were woefully underpowered, while other hybrid builds (separate builds - not the ones referred to in the first sentence) as incredibly overpowered. For instance (and only examples - not real ones), a hybrid build of Prot/Holy for Paladins might have been incredibly overpowered, while a hybrid Shadow/Disc Priest build was gimped to the point of not working at all.

I was making statement to his use of words, to which you pointed out specifically an important difference. Not pointing to any event in particular. But if I were to pick a particular point; since I do see where you are coming from. I would liken it to the Mace Rogue of yesteryear. With the continuous stunning. They were still beatable, and many -at the time- would chime in as to how much "qq'ing" was not needed, with all the "L2Purclas" to beat them responses. It seemed difficult to some, but unimportant to others that would just wipe through the mace talent wielding rogue. And there were a lot of threads about it.

I wont knock him for how he uses his words. He is very good at hiding the obvious when he writes. But not all of us will read the "What didn't work" title and look over an "and" or "or" while having experienced the opposite of his statements. And any example that could be given, will not take away that hybrids were seen by a lot of players as very competitive at the time. Just 2 cents though. Nothing more.

Comment by Interest

on 2011-06-01T13:41:52-05:00

I like Ghostcrawler. It's too bad people don't really understand what is so hard about balancing this game.

Interesting read.

Well.

Entitled people are entitled and elitist people are elitist. In short, people think they can develop the game better but instead of actually suggesting ideas they just flame the devs/blues/CMs

Comment by Dotard

on 2011-06-01T13:45:59-05:00

What I dont like is that there are less interesting talents for example rogue than were back in wotlk ... also i dont like that there are only 41 at 85 ... I was hoping for 51 at 85 as in Vanilla at 60.With this system you are forced to spend in some talents because if you will not, you will sucks ... also not many builds are possible with this system ... still hoping for 51 talents trees lol

Comment by Azrile

on 2011-06-01T13:47:50-05:00

I enjoy is posts. No reason to stop posting them. They are exactly what players talk about. I think Mastery is a success, I think lvl 10 is a HUGE success (it is nice to play your spec while leveling!). I think balance is as good as it has ever been.

The only negative I have is with choices. There was never any real choice back before Cata, which is similar to what we have now. I think they failed to increase the choices, which is a failure overall. They just need to go back and add 3-6 more talent points to each spec.

Comment by Tusz

on 2011-06-01T13:54:03-05:00

On the other hand, the talent trees still have traps for the unwary. For example, a Fury build that skips over Raging Blow is making a serious mistake. That may seem obvious to current players but it’s the kind of thing someone returning to the game after a hiatus might not understand immediately. (After all, you didn’t robotically take Ghostly Strike just because it was a gold medal ability.) While there is something to be said for safe choices, it would also be nice if the talents we expected players to have were talents they always had.

It's interesting that they're finally starting to acknowledge that letting people choose not to take "mandatory" talents is really weird and clunky. I'm wondering if a future revision (or Titan) will give "threshold" abilities you get just from spending X points in a tree, like an extension of how abilities like swiftmend and pyroblast work now. So instead of having an 11, 21, 31 point talent to take, you automatically get them upon spending your 10th/20th/30th point.

Comment by Porcell

on 2011-06-01T14:00:28-05:00

What I dont like is that there are less interesting talents for example rogue than were back in wotlk ... also i dont like that there are only 41 at 85 ... I was hoping for 51 at 85 as in Vanilla at 60.With this system you are forced to spend in some talents because if you will not, you will sucks ... also not many builds are possible with this system ... still hoping for 51 talents trees lol

I'm not sure you've really thought about this. Back when there were 71 talent points, you had a lot of talents that were:

Etc etc etc. Those talents might has well have NOT been there since you 100% HAD to take them. The game was balanced around everyone 100% having them (so on the off chance you were a newb and didn't know, you'd totally be in the gutter). Talents like that were not interesting. So they wacked the majority of the boring flat passive talents and re-balanced.

Now you actually have choices. I can just speak from a Warrior perspective, but you have anywhere from 4-8 talent points that can go pretty much wherever you want them to go depending on what utility things you want in your build.

We have more choices now than we ever had. There used to be VERY set cookie cutter builds that you had to take, or else you were "trash."

Comment by Interest

on 2011-06-01T14:04:45-05:00

Well there's still some talents like that at the moment.

Fortunately, there's only a few.

Comment by xaratherus

on 2011-06-01T14:08:31-05:00

On the other hand, the talent trees still have traps for the unwary. For example, a Fury build that skips over Raging Blow is making a serious mistake. That may seem obvious to current players but it’s the kind of thing someone returning to the game after a hiatus might not understand immediately. (After all, you didn’t robotically take Ghostly Strike just because it was a gold medal ability.) While there is something to be said for safe choices, it would also be nice if the talents we expected players to have were talents they always had.

It's interesting that they're finally starting to acknowledge that letting people choose not to take "mandatory" talents is really weird and clunky. I'm wondering if a future revision (or Titan) will give "threshold" abilities you get just from spending X points in a tree, like an extension of how abilities like swiftmend and pyroblast work now. So instead of having an 11, 21, 31 point talent to take, you automatically get them upon spending your 10th/20th/30th point.

I'm pretty sure this is what the "Path of the Titans" system (announced at the BlizzCon right after Cata was announced) was meant to be, but it was scrapped for being "too difficult" to implement.

It was replaced with Mastery, which is an interesting stat and useful, but as I mentioned, it still needs some work so that it's desirable for all specs; and again, making it visible for all classes/specs would be nice (as is, some classes really only 'know' that it's working by looking at a combat log).

Comment by Dotard

on 2011-06-01T14:15:53-05:00

What I dont like is that there are less interesting talents for example rogue than were back in wotlk ... also i dont like that there are only 41 at 85 ... I was hoping for 51 at 85 as in Vanilla at 60.With this system you are forced to spend in some talents because if you will not, you will sucks ... also not many builds are possible with this system ... still hoping for 51 talents trees lol

I'm not sure you've really thought about this. Back when there were 71 talent points, you had a lot of talents that were:

Etc etc etc. Those talents might has well have NOT been there since you 100% HAD to take them. The game was balanced around everyone 100% having them (so on the off chance you were a newb and didn't know, you'd totally be in the gutter). Talents like that were not interesting. So they wacked the majority of the boring flat passive talents and re-balanced.

Now you actually have choices. I can just speak from a Warrior perspective, but you have anywhere from 4-8 talent points that can go pretty much wherever you want them to go depending on what utility things you want in your build.

Yeah but now go to talent calculator and start doing rogue combat spec ... you have to spend points to talents which are not interesting for PvE combat rogue in order to progress to next tier.And its the same as with wotlk ... after you will spend your talents in combat tree, you will spend 9 in assassination and 1 in subtlety because there is no other good build for that ... in other words LACK OF CHOICES

Comment by Dotard

Comment by Porcell

I'm pretty sure this is what the "Path of the Titans" system (announced at the BlizzCon right after Cata was announced) was meant to be, but it was scrapped for being "too difficult" to implement.

Too difficult meaning a nightmare to balance. They couldn't get it to feel right.

It was replaced with Mastery, which is an interesting stat and useful, but as I mentioned, it still needs some work so that it's desirable for all specs; and again, making it visible for all classes/specs would be nice (as is, some classes really only 'know' that it's working by looking at a combat log).

It wasn't replaced with mastery, it was replaced with the Glyph system revamp and the addition of "Major" glyphs (the old 'Majors' being changed into Prime).

Comment by Interest

Seems that there's 4 filler points. You can push them pretty much anywhere else in the Combat tree that you want.

*shrug*

Comment by Roackprime

on 2011-06-01T14:41:38-05:00

I think ghostcrawler writes like a pretty defensive engineer (but admittedly it is a REALLY tough audience). He often seems reluctant to help us understand WHY something didn''t work out but, instead, falls back to the trap of "We know it isn't working but we will fix it, trust us").

I get that from a marketing perspective. You are trying to tell the paying audience to be patient because help is on the way (or that a bug is actually a feature so they need to adjust).

But it strikes me that this is missing a more mature (and dare I say couragous) way to engage the player base that actually would build greater, not less, customer loyalty. The ONE thing that Blizzard has that the customer base does not is DATA - obtained from millions of toons likely playing for BILLIONS of hours. They have the option of observing individual play - to see what is and isn't working. I would be much more interesting to hear from the designers as to WHY they were thinking something and how the data suprised them and forced some rethinking of that original hypothesis. It would give us insight into how THEY thought about the game.

To pick his relatively unexciting example) why 33/66/100 would be OK and why, given the data, they are finding it isn't.? Is it that everyone picks 100? That there hope for a tradeoff didn't materialize because the theory crafter ran the numbers and derived a min max solution? Why?

Or even more interesting, I would love to hear from him about data on various specs that seem to "not work" in PVP. Worldwide - for example - how do prot warriors playing pvp fair? What does such data suggest about their goal of making every one of the three specs viable. What are they learning from the data? And what could they share to make us more engaged or better players.

GC needs to understand that the market has spoken. He and his team built a great mousetrap. But real maturity isn't capturing radioactive gators. It is admitting that complex systems (of which WOW is one) are very difficult to understand and predict and the process of trail (and yes often error) is inherent in how we learn as a species. Lifting up that curtain would make for more interesting and engaging reading. Otherwise, go back to designing and step away from the blue posts - of which your marketing department can handle just fine.

Comment by Tusz

on 2011-06-01T14:43:32-05:00

I'm pretty sure this is what the "Path of the Titans" system (announced at the BlizzCon right after Cata was announced) was meant to be, but it was scrapped for being "too difficult" to implement.

Too difficult meaning a nightmare to balance. They couldn't get it to feel right.

It was replaced with Mastery, which is an interesting stat and useful, but as I mentioned, it still needs some work so that it's desirable for all specs; and again, making it visible for all classes/specs would be nice (as is, some classes really only 'know' that it's working by looking at a combat log).

It wasn't replaced with mastery, it was replaced with the Glyph system revamp and the addition of "Major" glyphs (the old 'Majors' being changed into Prime).

From what I understand, it was supposed to be its own system, alongside glyphs and talents. The problem there is they'd have three separate systems occupying the same design space (ability customization). Glyphs have mostly dropped their benefits-with-drawbacks concept they had initially, so they feel like the kind of "boring +X% bonus" talents Cata mostly got rid of. Add to that the problem with Path of the Titans having a weird advancement system, and you have a development nightmare.

But I digress. Anyway, formally acknowledging that mandatory talents exist and are kind of a problem: good sign.